SMITHY, by Mona Leeson Vanek

SMITHY

© Mona Vanek  





Albert Edward "Al" Leeson at his forge in The Spokane Blacksmith &Welding Shop, E. 1502 Trent Avenue, Spokane, Washington, ca. 1940, courtesy Al & Ottillie "Tillie" Leeson collection.

 Smithy! He walked with big strides onto any job he took - and he left when he didn't like it. The most independent man in town - the blacksmith.

Last of Spokane, Washington's smithies, standing by his glowing forge at E. 1502 Trent, Leeson lamented the passing of the smithies, who were once some 200 strong in Spokane.

"They were the hardest workers in town. Most were hard drinking men with fun in them, and enormous pride," so said Albert  E. Leeson in 1962. 

"Independent, quick tempered, exacting, and a pretty good bunch of fellows", he said.

McGoldrick Lumber Company's logging horses were brought from the woods to their big barn, 8 or 10 at a time, to be shod. Four smiths stood at the shop's 4 forges. The helpers shod the draft horses, and were often kicked or sat on.McGoldrick Lumber Company's logging horses were brought from the woods to their big barn, 8 or 10 at a time, to be shod. Four smiths stood at the shop's 4 forges. The helpers shod the draft horses, and were often kicked or sat on.
 

Four forges were kept burning constantly in the old U. S. Blacksmith Shop where Leeson spent time learning the trade from Bill Faywell, known throughout the area's logging camps. Al usually handled the heavy hammer while the senior blacksmith worked at the forge.

As blacksmith for various logging outfits, Leeson worked at Santa, Idaho,  Bovill, Idaho and Fernwood, Idaho, before going to McGoldricks.

The camp smith took care of the teams used to skid logs, did all the iron work on the big wooden sleighs on which lumber was loaded, and made all sorts of tools necessary to logging operations.

Leeson became an artist with a hot forge, a chunk of iron, an anvil, and a blacksmith hammer.




In 1939, Al Leeson began building his Spokane Blacksmith & Welding Works cement block building at E. 1502 Trent Avenue, on the eastern outskirts of the Spokane business district, ca. 1940, courtesy Al and Tillie Leeson collection.

In 1939 he built his own blacksmith business, incorporating the newer field of welding into it. The Spokane Blacksmith & Welding Shop, occupied lots at 1502 E. Trent Ave., then near the outskirts of the business community. Day after day he walked the miles from the family home on Morgan Acres, working from daylight to dark, erecting his concrete block building. On Saturday his wife, Tillie, and their three small children spent the day there with him.



Investing all his profits, Al Leeson gradually equipped his business with the latest acetylene welding equipment, a drill press, vices, a big coal-fired forge, bellows, a heavy duty anvil, and dozens of blacksmith tools, wrenches, hammers, etc. He devised a peg-board on the rear wall of the shop, and painted black silhouettes of each tool, hanging each in its proper place before going home at night. Thieves robbed the shop several times. When Spokane Police failed to apprehend them, Al rigged an alarm system, including a big gong that hung above his bed, in his house a block away. Theft stopped the night the gong awoke him and, pulling on trousers, grabbing his .22 caliber high-powered rifle from the wall, he dashed through the alley, caught the thieves red handed, and held them at gunpoint until the police his wife had summoned by phone arrived to take them into custody. One hung himself in jail before the trial, where the others were convicted.

The desperately hard years of beginning his business, when thawing frozen water pipes during cold winters was often the only money he had to buy coal for his forge and put food on the table, were soon followed by World War II years of prosperity.



Arc welding soon replaced acetylene welding. Before he left Morgan Acres in north Spokane to build Spokane Blacksmith & Welding Works, Al owned a welder, a new 300 amp Lincoln generator he married to an old Star car motor, and built a trailer using the frame of an old car which he pulled behind his car so he could go to wherever the work was. Eventually, he mounted two arc welders on vehicles he designed to add portable welding to his services. Tillie minded the shop, answering the telephone, scheduling jobs, doing the bookkeeping, while Al worked wherever his expertise was needed, ca., 1942, courtesy Al and Tillie Leeson collection.

 

 

 

 



Overhead arc welding required special skills which Al quickly mastered, and taught to students in his shop, which was soon crowded with welding jobs, ca., 1944, courtesy Al and Tillie Leeson collection.

As soon as Al located a truck he could buy he mounted an arc welder. Due to increasing prosperity during WWII, he soon had two trucks equipped with arc welders, ca. 1944, courtesy Al and Tillie Leeson collection.



 Smithies and welders were rated A-1 citizens; necessary to the well being of America. Leeson's reputation for excellence in workmanship and in judgment put him working around-the-clock hours at the nearby naval station, at Farragut, Idaho by 1942. Meanwhile, Tillie took orders at the shop for jobs awaiting his return home.

1943 - Al and an unidentified hired helper working on a welding job in front of his Trent Avenue shop. The helper was a machinist and also ran Al's metal lathe.



 

It was a red-letter celebration day when Al bought his 10-foot long, belt-driven lathe! Courtesy Al and Tillie Leeson collection.

Their children grew up to the musical cadence of his hammer pinging on the anvil. Squeezing the bellows to fan the forge-fire was reserved as a special treat, like answering the telephone. They "earned" money for bicycles by using a large magnet to scour the steel shavings from the brass shavings caught in a big pan beneath his metal working lathe. All the while, local characters like Willie Wiley and others, not a few of which were habitual drunks, colored the environment within the confines of the shop's block walls.
 

Victory gardens, war bonds, fund raisers and Armed Forces service men brought home from Sunday church service, during World War II. About the time the war ended, Al decided it was time to pursue another dream, so he and Tillie began investigating  rural properties. However, whereas Tillie envisioned returning to wheat farming, Al's dreams were elsewhere, and as usual, he prevailed.



Al Leeson on Red, his favorite horse on his 160-acre Bull River Ranch, 20-miles from Noxon, Montana, in Sanders County, Montana, where he retired in 1945, ca. 1946, courtesy Al and Tillie Leeson collection.



Pictured here with the whitetail buck he shot, loaded on Pinto pony, Al enjoyed hunting, and took pride in providing venison for his table. As soon as his children were old enough to have a hunting license, he share his hunting expertise, and also taught them wilderness survival skills, ca., 1946, courtesy Al and Tillie Leeson collection.

After the end of WWII in 1945, Leeson retired and moved his family to a remote mountain ranch in northwestern Montana, that offered great fishing and hunting.

There, he logged and raised cattle, until Washington Water Power Company began constructing dams on the Clarks Fork River. Al worked on the Cabinet Gorge Dam, in Idaho.

Later, when Northern Pacific Railroad track was being removed in preparation to relocation necessitated by construction of a second dam on the Clark's Fork River, upstream from Noxon, in northwestern Sanders County, Montana, Leeson met the

Al began with a block of wood and his pocket knife, and before the long winter ended he had invented the rudiments from which he devised a pneumatic-powered automatic railroad spike puller. He patented his invention a few years later, and son Chester further refined it. Unfortunately, Al died before his dream of marketing it came true ~ he envisioned the proceeds paying for his grandchildren to attend college, ca., 1960-61, courtesy Al and Tillie Leeson collection.

challenge of speeding track removal by inventing a pneumatic-powered spike puller.
 

After the dam construction era, in 1961, he helped his son, Chester fulfill his dream of purchasing the Spokane Blacksmith & Welding Works business Al had started in 1939, and sold in 1945 to Babe Reynolds. 

Before the smithy's death in 1964, automatic welding had evolved to replace the skills Al helped pioneer. Spokane's old time smithy era lives only in memories of the ringing ping of hammer striking metal, bending it to a smithy's creation.

Spokane blacksmith, Al Leeson

by Mona Leeson Vanek 1991

When Arthur Frank Vanek and Mona Inez Leeson wed on August 31, 1949 they linked the following family trees, [Maternal ~ Muench and Leeson] [Paternal ~ Vanek and Gremaux].

Muench Ancestry ~ Leeson Ancestry ~ Vanek Ancestry ~ Gremaux Ancestry 

 

Albert Leeson Connection.

Behind These Mountains Trilogy

Albert Edward Leeson biography, by Mona Leeson Vanek

When Arthur Frank Vanek and Mona Inez Leeson wed on August 31, 1949 they linked the following family trees, [Maternal ~ Muench and Leeson] [Paternal ~ Vanek and Gremaux].

Muench Ancestry ~ Leeson Ancestry ~ Vanek Ancestry ~ Gremaux Ancestry

 

 

ALBERT EDWARD LEESON (ca. 1929)

I am the eldest daughter of Al Leeson. What follows i my dad's life, as I know it, and as he related parts of it to me one snowy winter night in early January 1954 when he had been to the funeral of his brother-in-law, Richard Muench, in Spokane, Washington, and was driving through a frightful snowstorm to get back to his Bull River Ranch in Sanders County, northwestern Montana, to care for his cattle and animals.

Albert Edward Leeson was born October 3, 1897, at W. 458 Williams Street, Porchester, New York. At the age of ten, his father died, I guess while they were on the homestead near Stratford, Washington. After that time his mother supported her family of two girls, Ethel and Alice, and son, Albert, by operating a boardinghouse and doing catering services in Spokane, Washington. She was a member of the Lutheran Church and attended St. John's Cathedral on Grand Blvd.

At the age of 14, Albert got into a fracas at school. He said he was in the third grade, and he threw an inkwell at the schoolmaster, and then he and another lad jumped through a window and ran away from home. They lived in railroad hobo camps, learning all manner of survival and morals, and gradually worked their way south. They spent some time on ranches in Mexico. Then Albert worked his way to Spokane. They often rode the rails and frequented dance halls and poolrooms.

He married Gertrude, and had a son, Frank Edward Leeson. He logged and did construction work around St. Maries, Idaho. He also earned money by painting designs and creations on lady's legs, when that was in vogue. He also was a very good swimmer.

For a time, Al worked on road construction on the Denton curves near Hope, Idaho, and often went to the town of Heron, Montana where he played banjo ukulele with the bands there.

He and Gertrude divorced, and he received custody of Frank who he left in the care of his mother until she was killed while she and Frank were crossing a street in Spokane and were struck by a car, when Frank was 8-years old.

Al married Ottillie Muench in 1929. They were both working at a lumber company in Spokane.  He had been dating Tillie's sister, Vanda, when Vanda stood him up and Tillie took her place for the date. They were married on Emil and Rosalia Muench's farm south of Spokane, at Chester, Washington.

Al and Tillie moved to Klamath Falls, Oregon, where he worked in logging. After leaving Oregon they moved to Helena, Montana, and then back to Spokane. His hearing was severely damaged in a logging mishap when the truck he was driving was let down the mountain by the "donkey engine" too fast. (Mom always said he'd been in a fistfight in a bar with the donkey engine operator, earlier and the guy was getting even.)

In 1931 they bought a small house and acreage in Morgan Acres, just outside of Spokane city limits on the north side. There they had a cow, chickens, pigs and always grew large gardens. The house had two bedrooms, a living-dining room and a kitchen. There was an outhouse and a barn\garage. A root cellar under the house was entered through an outside cellar door and stairway.

Al and Tillie had three children, Chester (1931), Mona (1932) and Carol (1936.). At sometime while he was a youngster, a man who boarded in his mother's boarding house was learning to be a welder, and Al learned from him. Then, on Morgan Acres, when the depression hit, Al began doing a few welding jobs in his barn\garage. It seemed like a good occupation and he was very good at that, and blacksmithing, which he had also learned on his travels. So Al bought a lot in Spokane, at 1502 E. Trent, and built the Spokane Blacksmith and Welding Shop in 1939.

For many months, he walked ½ mile from his house on Morgan Acres to the nearest bus stop, and rode the bus to the shop and back each day. In the fall of 1939, he sold their home on Smith Street in Morgan Acres and moved to Spokane, renting a house on Lee Street, near the shop. Later he built a small two-room cabin a block from the shop at 1503 E. Front Street.

The shop was burglarized so many times that he finally installed a burglar system and hooked it up through the alley to a large gong he hung on the wall above his bed. When it sounded, he grabbed his rifle and ran through the alley to the shop. After a couple of tries, he finally caught the burglars inside the shop, and got the police to come and arrest them. One robber committed suicide in jail while awaiting trial.

These were hard years. Tillie helped in the shop by minding the telephone and doing the books, so Al could be free to take outside or "portable" jobs. He bought a couple of trucks and welders, and had a large forge and bought a good metal-lathe. His blacksmith tools were extensive, and Al crafted some of them.

The large bin of metal shavings under the lathe provided bicycles for Chet and Mona. Each were given a magnet and by picking out the iron shavings to leave only clean brass shavings that could be sold, each enough money to buy their own (used) bicycle.

During the slack periods, Al began making tiny anvils from brass for his friends. They were very popular and could have been sold but he only made them for a few friends. Wintertime brought lots of pipe-thawing jobs, and he was on call 24-hours a day, putting in long, long hours, seven days a week.

During the years of World War II era, business picked up, and Al spent a lot of time welding at Farragut Naval Station near Bayview, Idaho. He tried to get into the navy but was turned down, party because of his age and his poor hearing and partly because of his occupation. Blacksmith and welding were considered too vital. He held an A-1 gas ration card, the best priority you could have.

Around 1942, they bought a large 12-room home on the corner of Baldwin Avenue and Cincinnati Street. The also bought a Packard car, which was the first car they'd owned for many years (since before leaving Morgan Acres.) This made trips to the lakes possible, and during summers every available weekend was spent at a lake.

Al taught his children swimming, ice skating, and roller skating. When beer floats were invented, he thought they were made of beer and ice cream, not root beer and ice cream. He always made his with beer and ice cream. On summer Sundays he often bought three quarts of ice cream, and the family would eat it all. Their dog, Trixie, loved licking the pasteboard cartons!

Al was an avid fisherman and often fished at Sasheen Lake for bass with his 'cronies,' as Mom always called his friends. They brought home tubs full of them. He taught Chet and Mona how to row a boat, and fish.

In 1945, because Al had gotten into such a terrible drinking habit and was ruining his health and his business, he and Mom decided to sell the business and retire to a ranch. The looked at many ranches and farms, with Mom mostly interested in wheat farms, like the one where she'd grown up, on the Canadian prairie. But the ranch that stole Al's heart was in the Bull River valley near Noxon, Montana. Bull River flowed through the heart of it, and dolly varden char could be speared by the washtub full (illegal spearing,) and deer roamed all over the property.

The Bull River valley was a spectacular mountain setting. So Al took an option on the 160-acre ranch, bought a herd of cattle and spent the summer working on the ranch for the lady who had it leased.

On November 1, 1945, the family moved there. The next morning the snow was a foot deep, and kept falling steadily. The winter brought five feet of snow and a whole new way of living. The cattle were sold at a good profit, as there wasn't enough hay to winter them.

Haying and herding cattle to range, cutting wood for the stoves, and ice blocks from Bull Lake for the ice box, logging, fishing, hunting, and battling the elements, was the mode of living for the next several years. There was no electricity or running water on the ranch, so life was rather primitive as Mona, Chester and Carol grew up.

The primitive road through the valley was dirt and rocky ground, so it was alternately foot-deep-dust or axle-deep-mud, from winter to winter. Al bought the first John-Deere Lindeman crawler tractor to the valley, and it replaced the team of horse used for pulling people through the mud holes. Many travelers spent the night and enjoyed wonderful hospitality at the Leeson's home. Many of them became good friends.

Al built a new hay shed on the island in the meadow, plowed and seeded the meadows with help from Chet and a hired hand. He introduced Canary grass in the bogs. He brought the first automated hay bailer to the country, and contracted hay-baling on people's ranches as far away as Trout Creek. His cattle were white-faced polled Herefords.

Lacking electricity, he welded together two 10-gallon Coca Cola cans, and put a copper coil in the kitchen wood range so they had hot running water from a spigot. A wash basin sat on a small cabinet by the back door, next to the kitchen stove. This required filling the 20-gallon Coke-can with water pumped from the well at the back door and carried, pail-by-pail to fill it. Which also meant keeping fire through the night during the long winters, so that the copper coils would not freeze and burst. Al didn't get up to keep fires! Tillie did!

Al did logging around the country, and when Cabinet Gorge Dam was being built just over the Idaho\Montana state line, he worked there as a welder. After that job was finished, he and his son, Chet, contracted several miles of land-clearing for construction of Noxon Rapids Dam.

When he was doing this, Al became interested in the pulling of railroad spikes necessary for relocation of the railroad. While he paid his evening visit to the outdoor john (which he called 'the crapping can',) Al dreamed up the idea of a pneumatic-air powered spike puller. He whittled parts from wood, and then built the spike-puller he invented.

In 1958, Al began construction of a house on the Highway 10A, in Montana, 5 miles west of Noxon, and decided to sell the ranch. About then, or 1960, he ran for county commissioner of Sanders County, Montana, but was defeated in the election.

The ranch sold in the fall of 1959, and he and Tillie moved to the new house, although it wasn't completed.

About 1962 or 1963, Chet decided he wanted to buy back the Spokane Blacksmith and Welding Shop that Al had built in 1939. So Al financed him, and moved into Spokane to help Chet learn the trade and get started.

Before long they went into automatic welding, which was a new field just getting started. Chet excelled at it, and this meant having trucks and men on the road as all the jobs were on location, mainly building up caterpillar track pads and rails. IT was a fast growing business, and Al became the salesman for the shop, spending much of his time on the road between Spokane and Portland, Oregon.

He lived in an apartment close to the shop while Tillie preferred to stay in Montana. On night while he was walking home from the shop three toughs jumped him and beat him unconscious and robbed him. They didn't get much money but Al got a badly broken nose and jaw and had to have it wired, and returned to Montana while he healed.

He bought a small house in Spokane near the shop. He figured the house would have a good commercial resale value in a few years as the area was changing from residential to commercial. He and Tillie moved there and closed their house in Montana.

Al gave up drinking hard liquor, but bought a gallon of beer every day and drank that. He began gaining weight, which he'd never been able to do before. He also applied for a patent for his spike puller. After the patent was granted, he and Chet refined the machine and made it push-button automatic.

In March 1964, after returning from a business trip in Oregon, Al entertained friends that evening by playing his beloved "bones" to the Lawrence Welk program on TV. Upon retiring for the night he suffered a heart attack. He spent four days in the hospital, and then got mad and walked out and called an ambulance to take him home. Even before he got home, he lit up a cigarette. The doctor called Chet to say Al could not survive until he got home. However, Al had a drink of whiskey on arriving home, and he lived and spent the next month in bed at home. But since he'd walked out against the doctor's orders, they dropped his case and on April 4, 1964 he died when his heart went out of sinus rhythm.

Al died before he could complete a deal to have his spike puller manufactured. Chet dismantled the machine and put the parts to other good use.

Al lived a very unconventional life. His morals were not those approved by the culture of his time, and he felt no remorse at cheating on Tillie by having sex with other women. His religious beliefs were strong, but he despised all churches and called all preachers leeches, and yet he had an abiding faith in God.

He loved all things new, and tried many new inventions. He loved all outdoor sports, and anything that offered excitement and a good time. He loved picnics and parties, indoors or out. He was charming, contrary and hard to live with, loving, demonstrative, and extremely kind to any underprivileged, wrongly accused or underdog.

However, Al harbored strong prejudices. He hated all "spiks" (as he called Italians) and Mexicans. He distrusted "roundheads" (as he termed all Swedes and Norwegians) and never trusted a man with small feet, and declared men that wore small shoes were no good.

Al was warm hearted and outgoing, and yet he mistrusted most people. He could be very hard and unbending, and yet he taught his children to be tolerant and kind. He wasn't above breaking the law where drinking and driving was concerned. He passionately hated a thief or a liar, and yet he could lie like a trooper when it suited his needs.

Life was never dull when Al was around, and we loved him dearly, though we often argued and fought vocally with him. Those of us who knew and loved him were blessed. (Written by Mona Leeson Vanek in 1976.)

Albert Leeson Connection.

Behind These Mountains Trilogy

Albert Edward Leeson - Recollections Recounted by wife Tillie

Recollections, as Al told them in 1962 to his wife, Tillie.

In 1905 Tom Whitlim went back east and brought the first acetylene torch to Spokane, Washington which he installed in the Sheet Metal Works, which fronted on Indiana Avenue, just west of Division Street. Whitlim lived in Elizabeth Murrison Leeson's boarding house on Montgomery Street. Beths' young son, Albert was eight years old and a student at Garfield Elementary School. Al became fascinated, watching Whitlim work with his torch.
 

Al remembered when the Union Irons work, the Muzzen Mill and the Washington mill were all on fire at the same time and the powder magazine in the Union Iron Works, about 1905-06.

Then Tom moved to South Howard Street, between First and Second Avenues. That's where Al went to school for four years to learn Acetylene welding. He was about twelve years old when he started to learn, after school and Saturdays and a lot of days when he didn't go to school. When he was about fifteen he quit Tom's shop as he didn't think there was any future in welding.



Albert Edward Leeson is the lad on the right, beside men who lived in his mother's rooming house in Spokane, Washington, ca, 1910, courtesy Elizabeth Murison Leeson Roberts' collection.

Al took a job delivering groceries from a store on Broadway Avenue (about the 2100 block), driving a one-horse cart during vacation time. They were living just off Ash, and he walked to work.

His next job was with Murgatroy's Drug Store, corner of Post and Wall, riding his bicycle to deliver orders for two years. Later he bought a motorcycle.

By this time he'd thrown an inkwell at a teacher, jumped through the window and quit school. Next, Al worked for Postal Telegraph for several weeks, then for Western Union Telegraph for about a month. He was working for Carr's Mercantile when he quit and left for Missoula, Montana, going via the 4th of July Canyon.

Al started out on his motorcycle, sold it near St. Regis for $150. At that time there were only rough wagon roads. In St. Regis he hopped a freight train and went to Missoula riding in a railroad boxcar. He found no work in Missoula, so went on to Butte, Montana.

In 1917, Al went to work at Cosmopolis, Washington, running a gravel train, narrow gauge rails, pulling 14 ¼-yard cars, side dump, putting in fill to construct a highway between South Aberdeen and Cosmopolis. It was swamp with a plank road. They took the planking and built a trestle, dumping the dirt on either side of the trestle until it came even with the top, and then shifting the planks and track over to bring in more dirt to widen the road.

Al's first recollection after that was of Lincoln, Nebraska. There he heard about Tom King, a cattle and horse ranger who needed hands, so he went to work there as a hay-hand and worked for King all summer. Al registered for the draft before he was 21, in Angora, Nebraska, which had a population of less than 100.

From there, Al went to New Castle, Wyoming, and went out on a ranch as cow-puncher on the Brock Ranch for a month, came back to New Castle, stayed there about 4 days. On his last day in New Castle, they signed the Armistice of World War I. Al was 21 years old that October 3^rd, 1928.

From New Castle, he went to work for Olson on a wheat ranch, hauling grain with six horse teams with a wagon that hauled 150 sack loads, 150 pounds to a sack, 60 pounds to the bushel, 1410 bushes, 9000 pounds. They drove in long wagon trains of farmers hauling grain to town, 50 miles away, with the wagon team in Brickings, and used rough locks on the back wheels, with soles from old shoes making the contact on the wheel. Worked for Olson half of the winter.

From there, Al went to work on another ranch in the same vicinity, feeding cattle the rest of the winter, but quit when he couldn't see cattle go loco because of insufficient feed.

Al also worked in Mexico, plowing for a contractor and spoke of also having worked in Colexico. During his teenage years he and a chum lived in railroad jungle camps as they road the rails to Mexico. [In January 1954, in route home from his brother-in-law, Richard "Dick" Muench's funeral in Spokane, Washington, Al stopped at daughter, Mona Vanek's home near Noxon, Montana, and told stories for a couple of hours about how difficult and dangerous it was during his teen years for young men living in hobo jungles when they rode the rails south to Mexico.]

Al Bitrick ran the Marvel Welding School, with the only electric welder in Spokane at that time. He started the school sometime in 1920. Al went to work there, learning electric welding, and worked part time for 2 years.

When he was married to Gertrude, Al was a logging truck driver in the St. Maries, Idaho area, and when the highway from Hope, Idaho to Clark's Fork, Idaho was built, he worked on road construction around the Denton curves. He played his banjo-ukelele at dances in Heron, Montana. While working near St. Maries, his hearing was damaged when the operator of the logging donkey let his truck down the mountain too fast, injuring Al's eardrums.

Other jobs Al held included working for the forest service, packing food to men on fire lines, and working for Jewel Freeze, several times. The last time was after he and Ottillie "Tillie" Muench were married (November 29, 1929) and their son, Chester, was born on October 19, 1931.

Al did gravel plant work on road construction jobs for Paul Cunningham. He worked for T. T. McGee, clearing land in 1959, operating caterpillar in the Lolo National Forest in Montana, clearing logs for a month.

During 1939 he constructed the building at 1502 E. Trent Ave., Spokane Washington and opened "Spokane Blacksmith & Welding Works." He sold his business in 1945, and on November 1, 1945 the family moved to The Bull River Ranch, in Bull River, Sanders County, Montana. Al became a rancher, and between then and 1962, he raised hay and cattle and logged.


He worked on several road and logging jobs in Montana, and held jobs with Washington Water Power Company during construction of Cabinet Gorge Dam, near the Idaho-Montana border. Following that, he helped clear land for construction of Noxon Rapids Dam, about fifteen miles upstream, on the Clarks Fork River. When son, Chester, purchased the former Spokane Blacksmith & Welding Works, Al moved to Spokane to assist his son, and died there in 1964. Written  by Tillie Leeson

When Arthur Frank Vanek and Mona Inez Leeson wed on August 31, 1949 they linked the following family trees, [Maternal ~ Muench and Leeson] [Paternal ~ Vanek and Gremaux].

Muench Ancestry ~ Leeson Ancestry ~ Vanek Ancestry ~ Gremaux Ancestry

Albert Leeson Connection.

The Muench Connection.

Behind These Mountains Trilogy

Leeson - Ottillie 'Tillie' Leeson (nee Muench)

 

OTTILIE was born May 24, 1906 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada to Emil and Rosalie Marion (nee: Herr) Muench. It pleased Tillie that her birthday was also on the day in May when Queen Victoria of England was born.

In 1910, when Tillie was four years old, she moved with her parents, two sisters, Martha (6) and Wanda (1), and two brothers, Richard (2) and Robert (born in route) to a homestead chosen by her father about 16 miles southeast of Swift Current, Saskatchewan, on the S.E 1/4 of Section 34, Township 13, Range 11, in the Bigford District. The family always referred to their farm as the Bigford Homestead. Two more brothers, Edward and Reinhold, and two more sisters, Emma and Olga were born there and two babies were stillborn.

"My mother's heart stopped during labour when Edward Fredrick was born, February 24, 1913 on the farm." Tillie said. Luckily, Rosalia revived and lived to raise all of her children to adulthood. On June 27, 1920 Olga was born prematurely and their mother again nearly lost her life. Olga was the only bottle-fed baby and was Tillie's special care.

Tillie's youth was one of hard work, and during years of crop failure, they lived in dire poverty as well.  "Even in good years, during the summer time, we kids had to go out in the pasture and pick up dry cow chips for cooking fuel. This was usually done barefooted and once in a while we stepped into a fresh green cow plaster and it oozed up between the toes. In wintertime, we had many terrible blizzards and it was best to stay home," she said.

Tillie related stories her mother had shared about her own youth in Russia. Rosalia told of the time one of her ancestors died. As was the custom, her clothing was sold. Later the family learned that the woman had sewn the few coins they'd saved into the hem of her skirt – what little wealth the family had was gone.

For a time, before the older Muench children began to leave home, there were 11 people at the table. The three eldest girls and one boy had finished the eight grades of school before Reinhold and the younger girls started. When Olga began school, there were five Muench children attending school together. Whenever Mother gave them a part of an apple for lunch, she cut it in four or five pieces, however many were going to school that particular day. Sometimes it would be one plum or sometimes a nice piece of sausage that went into their lunch.

Tillie often spoke of the fun times she and her siblings enjoyed, picking Saskatoon berries and wild goose berries, which made very good pies. Tillie became a very good cook, like her mother.

When Tillie was 17 years old, she went to Swift Current to work, as family housekeeper, for a lawyer named Cathrie. That's when she first saw a bathtub and electricity, and had a bed to herself. For five years she worked for various families. She moved to Moose Jaw in 1924, where she worked as housekeeper for a Doctor whose practice was in his house. A year later she moved to Coderr, Saskatchewan where she worked until April 3, 1928 to join her parents at the farm they'd bought near Chester, Washington, just south of Spokane, Washington, USA. She only returned to Canada for infrequent visits with her family, who in 1931 had returned to Canada.

She and Albert Edward Leeson were married on November 23, 1929 in a traditional home wedding in her parent's two-story white frame house at Chester, Washington. Tillie descended the staircase, dressed in an oyster-white calf-length dress beaded with tiny pearls and rhinestone scrolls around skirt, and a white floor length veil crowned with a headband adorned with orange blossoms and tiny white blossoms sculpted from wax.

They moved to Klamath Falls, Oregon in July 1930, left there in March 1931, traveling to Helena, Montana, and then returned to Spokane. All three of their children were born in Spokane: Chester Floyd (1931), Mona Inez (1932) and Carol Elizabeth (1936.)

Tillie wrote in her memoirs, "We lived on Morgan Acres until we sold our home in 1939, moving to 6 N. Lee Lee Street, where we rented until February 1940. We moved into our small house that Al built at 1502 Front Street, one block from our shop that he'd built; The Spokane Blacksmith and Welding Works, at 1503 Trent Ave. We lived on Front Street 2 ½ years, moving to E. 734 Baldwin in the late fall of 1942, where we'd bought a twelve-room house. We stayed there until November 1, 1945 when, after contracting to sell our house and business, we moved to the Bull River valley, fifteen miles from Noxon, Montana, onto a 160 acre ranch we bought.

"Our children found it a drastic change. In town they had a ten-minute walk to school. Now they had to be on the bus by 7:20 a.m. We often didn't see them in daylight for five days a week for several months in the wintertime. The house was always cold in the wintertime as I never really found all the cracks. The upstairs was hand-hewn shakes over poles for a roof and COLD!"

She failed to record her love of all children, or to tell how she never failed to give any child lots of affection and attention. She often raced or wrestled with her own three, even after they were teenagers. All during her life she loved gardening, cooking, canning and being outdoors. She was outgoing and always friendly. Tillie was well known for growing beautiful flowers, and for sharing whatever she had with others. She was frugal, and when she lived on Front Street, she walked to thrift stores, bought wool garments and took them home. After laundering them, using a razor blade, she'd carefully take them apart so she could cut quilt pieces from the best part of the material. Using as many embroidery stitches as she'd mastered, Tillie fashioned lovely quilts, which she gave freely to those less fortunate than herself.

She shared with her friends and neighbors the produce from the gardens she grew, milk and hand-churned butter, pastries from her kitchen, and flowers, and meat when there was any to spare. Her table was often shared by anyone who stopped in, either on business, for a visit, or just traveling through the Bull River valley.

Tillie did not like playing cards, abhorred alcohol, hated smoking, and wished she could dance, and loved swimming and hiking. She enjoyed both ice and roller-skating, sewed, knitted, crocheted and did embroidery, too. She loved shoes and hats and always had a considerable wardrobe of each. Because she'd frozen the tip of one ear and it curled over a tiny bit, and because a bout with influenza when she was a child had thinned her hair, she preferred wearing a hat wherever she went.

Tillie became a naturalized citizen of the United States on March 22, 1954 at Sanders County Courthouse, Thompson Falls, Montana. The Leeson family ranched in Montana for 16 years before she and Al retired in a small house Al built on Highway 200, about 5 miles west of Noxon. Their three children were already married, and each had a home and family.

Tillie attended churches of several denominations while living in Spokane. After moving to their Bull River Ranch, she had no opportunities to attend any church and missed that very much. After their children were grown and had left the ranch, Jehovah Witness members visited her frequently. They encouraged her to study with them, and shortly afterwards Tillie joined the Jehovah Witness Church at Noxon. She remained faithful to that religion the rest of her life.

Tillie and Al returned to Spokane in 1962 where Al was working with Chester, who had bought the welding business Al had sold in 1945. Al died of a heart attack in April 1964. Tillie became very active in the Jehovah Witness Church, and traveled as much as she could afford. She died of a brain-stem level stroke following a gall bladder surgery in October 1987. Both are buried in Greenwood Cemetery, Spokane, Washington.

Her three children credit both their parents for instilling in them honesty, love of family, good character, good morals, and a strong work ethic. ###

When Arthur Frank Vanek and Mona Inez Leeson wed on August 31, 1949 they linked the following family trees, [Maternal ~ Muench and Leeson] [Paternal ~ Vanek and Gremaux].

Muench Ancestry ~ Leeson Ancestry ~ Vanek Ancestry ~ Gremaux Ancestry

 

Albert Leeson Connection.

The Muench Connection.

Behind These Mountains Trilogy

Leeson - Albert Edward

When Arthur Frank Vanek and Mona Inez Leeson wed on August 31, 1949 they linked the following family trees, [Maternal ~ Muench and Leeson] [Paternal ~ Vanek and Gremaux].

Muench Ancestry ~ Leeson Ancestry ~ Vanek Ancestry ~ Gremaux Ancestry

Albert Edward Leeson
Paternal grandparents, John Thomas Leeson and wife Rebecca (Eborall) Leeson of Sheffield, England. These grandparents never came to the United States. Possibly small farmer or dairymen. Rebecca Eberall, born June 11, 1854, married John Thomas Leeson at Walsgrave On Sowe, Warawick, England.

Maternal grandparents

Robert Murison and Elizabeth (Mackie) Murison, of Edinburgh, Scotland. Emmigrated to the United States. Murison family were mostly sea-faring people, until members emmigrated to the United States, and homesteaded in the Palouse country in Washington state.

Parents: Alfred Leeson and Elizabeth (Murison) Leeson
Alice Leeson, sister
Ethel Leeson, sister
Albert Edward Leeson, born October 3, 1897, at W. 458 Williams Street, Porchester, New York.

Albert Edward Leeson married Gertrude Law, of St. Maries, Idaho. They had one son, Frank, born in 1922. Albert 'Al' and Gertrude 'Gerty' separated and divorced, with custody of their son going to Al. When he was about 2-3 years old, Frank was left with his grandmother, Elizabeth Murison Leeson Roberts, who would raise him until her death.



Al met and began dating 

Ottillie "Tillie" Muench after she moved from Canada to join her family,  Emil and Rosalia and children, who had moved to Chester, Washington in 1928.

Albert Edward Leeson and Ottillie Muench were married on November 23, 1929, at Chester, Washington. They had three children, all born at home in Spokane, Washington.

Their children:
Chester Floyd Leeson, born October 19, 1931, Mona Inez Leeson, born November 26, 1932, and Carol Elizabeth, born February 11, 1936.

Recollections, as Al told them to his wife, Tillie in 1962.
Tom Whitlim lived in Elizabeth (Beth) Murrison Leeson's boarding house on Montgomery Street. In 1905 Tom Whitlim went back east and brought the first acetylene torch to Spokane, Washington, which he installed in the Sheet Metal Works that fronted on Indiana Avenue, just west of Division Street. Beths' young son, Albert was eight years old and a student at Garfield Elementary School. Al became fascinated, watching Whitlim work with his torch.

Al remembered when the Union Irons Works, the Muzzen Mill and the Washington Mill were all on fire at the same time and the powder magazine in the Union Iron Works, about 1905-06.

Then Tom moved to South Howard Street, between First and Second Avenues. That's where Al went to school for four years to learn Acetylene welding. He was about twelve years old when he started to learn, after school and Saturdays and a lot of days when he didn't go to school. When he was about fifteen he quit Tom's shop as he didn't think there was any future in welding.

He took a job delivering groceries from a store located on about the 2100 block on Broadway Avenue driving a one-horse cart during vacation time. They were living just off Ash, and he walked to work. His next job was with Murgatroys Drug Store, corner of Post and Wall, riding his bicycle to deliver orders for two years. Later he bought a motorcycle. By this time he'd thrown an inkwell at a teacher, jumped through the window and quit school. Next, Al worked for Postal Telegraph for several weeks, then for Western Union Telegraph for about a month. He was working for Carr's Mercantile when he quit and left for Missoula, Montana, going via the 4th of July Canyon.

Al started out on his motorcycle, sold it near St. Regis for $150. At that time there were only rough wagon roads. In St. Regis he hopped a freight and went to Missoula riding in a boxcar on the railroad. He found no work in Missoula, so went on to Butte, Montana.

In 1917, Al went to work at Cosmopolis, Washington, running a gravel train, narrow gauge rails, pulling fourteen and a quarter yard cars, side dump, putting in fill between South Aberdeen and Cosmopolis, building a highway. It was swamp with a plank road. They took the planking and built a trestle, dumping the dirt on either side of the trestle until it came even with the top, then shifting the planks and track over to bring in more dirt to widen the road.

Al's first recollections after that was of Lincoln, Nebraska. There he heard about Tom King, a cattle and horse ranger needing hands, so he went to work there as a hay hand and worked for King all summer. Al registered for the draft before he was 21, in Angora, Nebraska, a place smaller than 100 people.

From there, Al went to New Castle, Wyoming and went out on a ranch as cow puncher on the Brock Ranch for a month, came back to New Castle, stayed there about four days. The last day they signed the Armistice of World War I. Al was 21 years old that October 3rd.From New Castle, he went to work for Olson on a wheat ranch, hauling grain with six horse teams with a wagon that hauled 150 sack loads, 150 pounds to a sack, 60 pounds to the bushel, 1410 bushes, 9000 pounds. They drove in long wagon trains of farmers hauling grain to town, fifty miles away, with the wagon team in Brickings, and used rough locks on the back wheels, with soles from old shoes making the contact on the wheel. Worked for Olson half of the winter.

From there, in the same vicinity, Al went to work on another ranch, feeding cattle the rest of the winter, but quit when he couldn't see cattle go loco because of insufficient feed.

Al also worked in Mexico, plowing for a contractor and spoke of having worked in Colexico, also.

Al Bitrick ran the Marvel Welding School with the only electric welder in Spokane at that time. He started the school sometime in 1920. Al started to work there, learning electric welding. He worked there parts of two years.

When he was married to Gertrude, Al was a logging truck driver in the St. Maries, Idaho area, and when highway from Hope, Idaho to Clark's Fork, Idaho was built, he worked on the road construction around the Denton curves. He played his banjo-ukelele at dances at Heron, Montana.

Other jobs Al held included working for the forest service, packing food to men on fire lines; working for Jewel Freeze, several times. The last time was after his son, Chester, was born in 1931. He did gravel plant worked on road construction jobs for Paul Cunningham after he married Tillie Muench. He worked for T. T. McGee, clearing land in 1959, operating caterpillar in the Lolo National Forest in Montana, clearing logs for a month.###

(Biography of Al Leeson, written by Mona Leeson Vanek in 1976.)
Albert Edward Leeson: As I know it and as he related parts of his life to me one snowy winter night in January, 1954. He'd been to the funeral of his brother-in-law, Richard Muench, in Spokane, Washington and was driving through a frightful snowstorm to get back to his ranch on Bull River, to care for his cattle and animals.

Albert Edward Leeson was born in Albany, New York, October 3, 1897. At the age of ten, his father died, I guess while they were on the homestead near Stratford, Washington. After that time his mother supported her family of two girls, Ethel and Alice, and one son, Albert, by operating a boardinghouse and doing catering services in Spokane, WA. She was a member of the Luther church and attended St. Johns Cathedral in Spokane.

At the age of fourteen, Abert got into a fracas at school. He said he was in the third grade, and he threw an inkwell at the schoolmaster and then he and another lad jumped through a window and ran away from home. They lived in railroad hobo camps, learning all manner of survival and morals and gradually worked their way south. They spent some time ion ranches in Mexico and then Albert worked his way to Spokane. They often rode the rails and frequented the dance halls and poolrooms.

He married Gertrude 'Gerty', and had a son, Frank Edward Leeson. Al logged and did construction work around St. Maries, Idaho, and made some money by painting designs and creations on lady's legs when that was in vogue. He also was a very good swimmer.

He and Gertrude divorced and he received custody of Frank who he left in the care of his mother until she was killed while she and Frank were crossing a street in Spokane and were struck by a car when Frank was eight years old.

For a time, Al worked on road construction on the Denton curves near Hope, Idaho and often went to the town of Heron, Montana where he played banjo ukulele with the bands there.

Al married Ottillie Muench in 1929. They were both working at a lumber company in Spokane. He had been dating Tillie's sister, Vanda, when Vanda stood him up and Tillie took her place for the date. They were married on Emil Muench's farm at Chester, Washington, south of Spokane.

Al and Tillie moved to Klamath Falls, Oregon and logged there. Also they moved to Helena, Montana and then back to Spokane. His hearing was severely damaged in a logging mishap when the truck he was driving was let down the mountain by the "donkey engine" too fast. (Mom always said he'd been in a fist fight in a bar with the donkey engine operator earlier and the guy was getting even.)

In 1931 they bought a small house and acreage in Morgan Acres, just outside of Spokane city limits on the north side. There they had a cow, chickens, pigs and always grew large gardens. The house had two bedrooms, a living-dining room and a kitchen. There was an outhouse as well as a garage. A root cellar under the house was entered through an outside cellar door and stairway.

Al and Tillie had three children, Chester Floyd (October 19, 1931), Mona Inez (November 26, 1932) and Carol Elizabeth (February 11, 1936.).


Al and Tillie with Chester, Mona and Frank, about 1935.

At sometime while Al was a youngster, a man who boarded in his mother's boarding house was learning to be a welder, and Al learned from him. Then on Morgan Acres, when the depression hit, Al began doing a few welding jobs in his barn\garage. It seemed like a good occupation and he was very good at that, and blacksmithing, which he'd learned on his travels. So Al bought a lot in Spokane at 1502 E. Trent and built the Spokane Blacksmith and Welding Shop in 1939.

For many months he walked the mile from his house on Morgan Acres to the nearest bus stop and took the bus to the shop and back each day. In the fall of 1939 he sold his home on Smith Street in Morgan Acres and moved to Spokane, near the shop, renting a house on Lee street. Later he built a small two-room cabin a block from the shop at 1503 Front Street. The shop was burglarized so many times that he finally installed a burglar system and hooked it up through the alley so a large gong hung above his bed. When it sounded he would grab his rifle and run through the alley to the shop. After a couple of tries he finally caught the burglars inside the shop and got the police. One robber committed suicide in jail while awaiting trial.

These were hard years. Tillie helped in the shop by minding the telephone and doing the books so Al could be free to take outside or "portable" jobs. He bought a couple of trucks and welders and had a large forge and bought a good metal lathe. His blacksmith tools were extensive and Al crated some of them. The large bin of metal shavings provided bicycles for Chet and Mona. Each were given a magnet and by picking out the iron shavings to leave only clean brass shavings that could be sold, enough money was earned to buy the bicycles.

During slack periods Al began making tiny anvils from brass for his friends. They were very popular and could have been sold but he only made them for a few friends. Winter time brought lots of pipe-thawing jobs and he was on call twenty-four hours a day, putting in long, long hours, seven days a week.

During the World War II era, business picked up and Al spent a lot of time welding at Farragut Naval Station near Bayview, Idaho. He tried to get into the navy but was turned down, party because of his age and his poor hearing and partly because of his occupation. It was considered too vital. He held an A-1 gas ration card, the best priority you could have.

Around 1942 they bought a large 12-room home on Baldwin and bought a Packard car. The first car they'd owned for many years (since before leaving Morgan Acres.) This made trips to the lakes possible and during summers every available weekend was spent at a lake.


Al holds Carol on his knee and Chester and Mona stand beside him, ca., 1942.

Al taught his children swimming, ice-skating, and roller-skating, and laid a hardwood floor in the basement of their house on Baldwin, so they could roller-skate as soon as they had skates with the then new fiber wheels.

When beer floats were invented, about 1940, he thought they were made of beer and ice cream, not root beer and ice cream. He always made his with beer and ice cream. On summer Sundays he often bought three quarts of ice cream and the family would eat it all. Their dog, Trixie, loved licking the pasteboard cartons! Al was an avid fisherman and fished often at Sasheen Lake for bass. with his 'cronies', as Mom always called his friends. They brought home washtubs full of bass. He taught Chet and Mona how to row a boat and fish, too.

In 1945, because Al had gotten into such a terrible drinking habit and was ruining his health and his business, he and Mom decided to sell the business and retire to a ranch. Many ranches and farms were looked at, with Mom interested in wheat farms mostly, but the one that stole Al's heart was in the Bull River valley near Noxon, Montana. It had the Bull River running through the heart of it and dolly varden char could be speared by the washtub full (illegal spearing) and deer roamed all over the property.

It was a spectacular mountain setting. So Al took an option on the 160 acre ranch, bought a herd of cattle and spent the summer working on the ranch for the lady who had it leased. November 1, 1945 the family moved there. The next morning the snow was a foot deep and kept falling steadily. The winter brought five feet of snow and a whole new way of living. The cattle were sold at a good profit as there wasn't enough hay to winter them.

Haying and herding cattle to range, cutting wood for the stoves and ice blocks from Bull Lake for the ice box, logging, fishing, hunting, and battling the elements was the mode of living for the next several years. There was no electricity or running water on the ranch so life was rather primitive as Mona, Chester and Carol grew up.

The road through the valley was dirt, so it was alternately foot deep dust or axle deep mud. Al bought the first John-Deere Lindeman crawler tractor to the valley and it replaced the team of horse used for pulling people through the mud holes. Many travelers spent the night and enjoyed the wonderful hospitality at the Leeson's and many became good friends.

Al built a new hay shed on the island in the meadow, plowed and seeded the meadows with the help of Chet and a hired hand, and introduced Canary grass in the bogs. He brought the first automated hay bailer to the country and contracted hay baling on other people's ranches as far away as Trout Creek. His cattle were white-faced polled Herefords.

Lacking electricity, he welded together two ten-gallon Coca Cola cans and put a copper coil in the kitchen wood range so that they had hot water. But this also meant filling the cans with water pumped from the well at the back door and carried, pail-by-pail full. It also meant keeping fire through the night in the long winters so that the copper coils would not freeze and burst. Al didn't get up to keep the fires! Tillie did!

Al did logging around the country and when the Cabinet Gorge Dam was being built in Idaho he worked there as a welder. After that job was finished, he and his son, Chet, contracted several miles of land clearing for the construction of the Noxon Rapids Dam. When he was doing this he became interested in the pulling of railroad spikes necessary for the relocation of the railroad. While he did his evening visit to the outdoor john, Al dreamed up the idea of a pneumatic air powered spike puller. He whittled the parts from wood and then built it and applied for a patent. After the patent was granted he and Chet refined the machine and made it all push-button automatic, but Al died before he could complete a deal to have it manufactured and Chet dismantled the machine, and no others were made.

In 1958 Al began construction of a house on the Highway 10A in Montana, five miles west of Noxon, and decided to sell the ranch. About then, or 1960, he ran for country commissioner of Sanders County, Montana but was defeated in the election.

The ranch sold in the fall of 1959 and he and Tillie moved to the new house, though it wasn't completed.

In mid-August, 1952, Leeson had been in an automobile accident with a fellow named Whittie. Leeson had survived, Whittie had not. The pair of them had met in Marion's Tavern in Noxon, got to drinking, and started for Clark Fork, Idaho in Whittie's car. They'd stopped on the way at The Hereford Tavern, which was owned by C.R.'s son. Buster. The partying pair each downed more drinks before they drove off, with Whittie behind the wheel of his car, to continue on their way. Leeson's car was in Noxon, where he stayed on weekdays while working on a logging job for Strawberry. About midnight, Leeson was found alongside the highway about a mile east of Clark Fork, soaking wet and in shock. He told rescuers that Whittie had suddenly veered into the river, the car had sunk and although he tried, he'd been unable to get Whittie out. Leeson had barely swum out of the swift current, reached shore and collapsed.

About 1962 or 1963 Chet decided he wanted to buy back the Spokane Blacksmith and Welding Shop that Al had built in 1939. So Al financed him and moved into Spokane to help Chet learn the trade and get started. Before long they went into automatic welding, which was a new field, in its infancy. This meant having trucks and men on the road as all the jobs were on location, mainly building up caterpillar track pads and rails. It was a fast growing business and Al became the salesman for the shop, spending much of his time on the road between Spokane and Portland, Oregon.

He lived in an apartment, in Spokane close to the shop, while Tillie preferred to stay in Montana. On night while he was walking home from the shop three toughs jumped him and beat him unconscious and robbed him. They didn't get much money but Al got a badly broken nose and jaw and had to have it wired.

He bought a small house in Spokane near the shop that he thought would have a good commercial resale value in a few years as the area was changing from residential to commercial. He and Tillie moved there and closed their house in Montana.

In March of 1964, after returning from a business trip in Oregon, Al entertained friends that evening by playing his beloved "bones" to the Lawrence Welk program on TV. Upon retiring for the night he suffered a heart attack. He spent four days in the hospital and then got mad and walked out and went home. The doctor called Chet to say he could not survive until he even got home. However, Al lived and spent the next month in bed at home. But since he'd walked out against the doctor's orders they dropped his case and on April 4, 1964 he died of his heart getting out of rhythm.

Al lived a very unconventional life. His morals were not those approved of by the civilization of his time and he often had other sex partners than his wife. His religious beliefs were strong, but he despised all churches and called all preachers leeches, and yet he had an abiding faith in God. He loved all things new and tried many new inventions. He loved all outdoor sports and playing. He was contrary and hard to live with, loving and extremely kind to any underprivileged, wrongly accused or underdog. Yet he had strong prejudices. He hated all "spiks" (as he called Italians) and Mexicans. He distrusted "roundheads" (as he termed all Swedes and Norwegians) and never trusted a man with small feet, declaring that he was no good.

Al was warm-hearted and outgoing, and yet he mistrusted most people. He could be very hard and unbending and yet he taught his children to be tolerant and kind. He wasn't above breaking the law where drinking and driving was concerned.

Life was never dull when Al was around and we loved him dearly, though we often fought vocally with him. Those of us who knew and loved him were blessed.

###


SMITHY© May, 2003, by Mona Leeson Vanek

Smithy! He walked with big strides onto any job he took and left when he didn't like it -- the most independent man in town -- the blacksmith.

"They were the hardest workers in town. Most were hard-drinking men with fun in them, and enormous pride", so said Albert E. Leeson in 1962, last of Spokane's smithies, standing by his glowing forge at E. 1502 Trent.

Leeson lamented the passing of the smithies, once some 200 strong in Spokane. "Independent, quick tempered, exacting, and a pretty good bunch of fellows", he said.

Four forges were kept burning constantly in the old U.S. Blacksmith Shop where Leeson spent time learning the trade from Bill Faywell, well known throughout the area's logging camps during the 1920s. Al usually handled the heavy hammer while the senior blacksmith worked at the forge.

McGoldrick Lumber Company's logging horses were brought, eight or ten at a time, from the camps to U.S. Blacksmith Shop's big barn, to be shod. Four smiths stood at the shop's four forges heating iron to red-hot, and then hammering it into horseshoes. The helpers who shod the draft horses were often kicked or sat on.

As blacksmith for various logging outfits, Leeson worked at Santa, Idaho, Bovill, Idaho and Fernwood, Idaho, before going to McGoldricks. A camp smithy took care of the teams used to skid logs, and did all the iron work on the big wooden sleighs on which lumber was loaded. Smithies made all sorts of tools necessary to logging operations. Leeson became an artist with a hot forge, a chunk of iron, an anvil, and a blacksmith hammer.

Welding was evolving as a new innovation when Leeson was a young lad. He'd learned the rudiments of it from men who boarded in the rooming house his mother supported her family with. After the depression began abating he bought a welder in the mid-1930s and took to welding like a fish to water. He installed it in a barn at the Leeson's home on Morgan Acres, and took on any type of welding job that came his way. In 1939, carefully choosing a location near the outskirts of the business community where he knew most farmers traveled when they were in town, he began building his Spokane Blacksmith & Welding Shop, at 1502 E. Trent Avenue.

Day after day he walked half a mile from the family home on Morgan Acres, caught a bus into Spokane, and worked from daylight to dark to erect his concrete block building. Some Saturdays, his wife, Tillie, and their three small children, rode the bus into town, bringing lunch and spending the day with him as he worked under the hot sun.

The prosperous years of World War II followed on the heels of the desperately hard years, when thawing frozen water pipes during icy winters was often the only money he had to buy coal for his forge and put food on the table, until spring brought farm machinery to repair.

Al Leeson ~~ Smithy Extraordinary
Smithies and welders were rated A-1 citizens -- necessary to the well being of America. By 1942, Leeson's reputation for excellence in workmanship and in judgment put him working around-the-clock hours at the nearby naval station at Farragut, Idaho. Well-drilling and base-construction required welding skills. Leeson was recalled to the naval base intermittently until the base was completed. Everyday that her husband was at the naval base, Tillie went to the shop and took orders for jobs that awaited his infrequent returns home.

Their children grew up to the musical cadence of Leeson's hammer pinging on the anvil. Squeezing the bellows to fan the forge fire was reserved as a special treat for them, like answering the phone. They earned money for bicycles by using a large magnet to scour and separate the steel and brass shavings, caught in a big pan beneath Al's metal working lathe, and then selling the brass.

Local characters like Willie Wiley, who became infamous for breaking the law by appearing in public sans shirt or shoes, colored the environment within the confines of Leeson's shop, as did railroad-riding transients looking for work. Although Leeson was generous as well as hard-working, bums who were habitual drunks got scant sympathy and were abided there only during the bitterest winter weather.

Victory gardens, war bonds, fundraisers, and Armed Forces service men that Tillie brought home from Sunday church services, to spend a "family day" with his family, were all part of this smithy's full life."

After the end of WWII, Leeson retired, sold the Blacksmith and Welding Works, and moved to a remote 160-acre ranch nestled between northwestern Montana's spectacular mountains. Intending to enjoy great fishing and hunting, he left behind blacksmithing and welding. Inflation soon hit hard. In addition to raising cattle and hay, from 1945 to the late 1950's Leeson logged the abundant timber, and then bought a bailing machine and contracted haying jobs. Next he accepted road building and logging jobs that took him far from the ranch for weeks at a time.

Washington Water Power Company, preparatory to damming the Clark's Fork River at Noxon Rapids, began relocating the Northern Pacific railroad tracks 20 miles from Leeson's Bull River ranch. Leeson and his son, Chester, who'd returned from a stint in the Coast Guard, contracted the job. They met the challenge of track removal, and Leeson invented and patented a pneumatic air-powered spike puller to speed the job.

Leeson began building a house on Highway 200, nearer to Noxon, Montana in 1958, and discovered he'd met an unanticipated challenge. "I can build any damned thing with iron but working with lumber, that's another story," he told Tillie.

He hired a helper and when their ranch sold in 1959, Al and Tillie were able to move in, although the house wasn't finished.

In 1961, Chester bought the Spokane business his father started in 1939. Soon, Leeson returned to the city, and lent his expertise and help to his son. Tillie moved back to Spokane with him. Before Al's death in 1964, employment for smithies ended and automatic -feed welding evolved. Chester designed and mounted his own automatic-feed welders onto trucks, and continued to expand and advance welding capabilities to meet ever-changing demands.

Spokane's old time smithy era lives only in stories, photographs and memories of the ringing ping of hammer striking metal, bending it to the smithy's creation.

END

 

Albert Leeson Connection.

The Muench Connection.

Behind These Mountains Trilogy